


The Token

by Cernunnos



Category: Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-12
Updated: 2012-08-12
Packaged: 2017-11-11 23:09:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/483911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cernunnos/pseuds/Cernunnos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are times when words would do no justice to express the depths of one's affections. There are times when a token means so much more.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Token

Casimiro beamed down at the piece of jewelry currently adorning his right ring-finger. It had been just big enough to fit and was incredibly beautiful…why not take it? After all, the old broad he’d taken it from wouldn’t need it. She’d been dead for God knew how long: probably a couple hundred years at least by the smell of her. It was one of those tear-inducing, expensive, custom jobs: a solid gold, spiraling band flecked with a few tiny diamonds…it had probably cost a fortune...likely given to her by her husband as some token of eternal love or some other piece of romantic bullshit people spouted back in those days.  
  
Traipsing across Europe with Finas had been an excellent idea, save for the fact that the Englishman in question had no sense of fun and wouldn’t go out to destroy things willy-nilly with him. And so, they had parted ways that evening, Casimiro leaving his companion to sulk around London while he flew off to the neighboring country-side to cause a little trouble. It wasn’t often that he went grave-robbing, but he’d been feeling a bit nostalgic for ‘the good old days’ and people during that time had been buried with some of the best shit if they had the money…and the few that he’d actually torn into had certainly had the money.  
  
Finas could smell death before he even stepped foot back inside their inn. It wasn’t the acrid smell of fresh blood that followed a feeding, however. It was something old, musty, and it clung to his senses as if in desperation to be acknowledged. He frowned, wrinkling his nose in an effort to be rid of the pungent aroma, but the closer he drew to their room, the stronger it became. His disgust was only heightened when he found the Italian wallowing all over their bed; the smell would probably never come out.  
  
“You’ve been mucking about in the cemeteries again, haven’t you, Casimiro?” he quipped, shutting the door and moving swiftly to open one of the windows. “You know I abhor…”  
  
“Yes, yes… You abhor gallivanting amongst the truly dead. If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times,” the slender man snapped back, stretching cat-like over the covers.  
  
The brunette snorted in distaste and began divesting himself of his scarf and coat. Daylight would not come for another few hours, but he felt he’d done enough walking for one night and the rest of his time could be better spent here rather than pacing in irritation up and down the streets. After all, there was hardly anyone to be found at this time of night, especially after the trouble in Whitechapel.  
  
“I simply do not understand your fascination with them… The dead should be left in their peace and yet you take such excitement in stirring up their graves and desecrating their remains. How entertaining could such a heinous act possibly be?”  
  
Casimiro cackled and turned two bright red eyes onto his companion. “What _isn’t_ entertaining about it? It’s like a treasure hunt! You never know what you’ll find! Some of them have old, mouldy family Bibles or some other sentimental shit…and then some of them have jewelry and expensive sentimental shit you can sell! Look at this ring and tell me we won’t get a pretty few pounds for this!” He grinned, flashing his hand in front of the other man’s face.  
  
The older vampire was tempted not to even look, but something about the way it gleamed in the light caught his eye and refused to allow his attention to slip elsewhere. He stood, transfixed on the piece with parted lips until the younger man finally broke the silence again.  
  
“Hey, old man… What’s wrong with you? You don’t like pretty things?”  
  
Lips quivered, finally closing to press themselves into a thin line. Scarlet eyes darkened, and Casimiro suddenly felt as though the room’s temperature had dropped a few degrees as he watched a shadow cross his mentor’s face.  
  
“Where did you get that ring?” His voice seemed a bit different…somewhat colder than usual and certainly more curt.  
  
“Off of some dead, rich bitch… She’s of no need for it anymore and I figured we could get something for it; maybe fare across the Strait and into France or somewhere a little less depressing than this place. You always brood whenever we come anywhere near here… You need to learn to live a little; what better use for immortality?” His voice trailed off a bit when he noticed his senior visibly bristle. Finas had never seemed so agitated…so angry before and it was alarming.  
  
“Whose grave?! What was her name?!”  
  
The way he barked the question had the blonde sitting up fully, long legs curling back against his body as if making himself smaller would appease the other man. “I don’t know! I don’t just stand around to read headstones, you know. It started with a “C”… Catherine, I think… Why? What’s it matter to you?”  
  
The brunette’s body seemed to shimmer in the soft lamp-light…his exposed flesh hissing much like an animal being branded. Pieces of it seemed to melt away, fading into a bright mist that Casimiro had never seen for himself but had been warned of many times by the man himself: Finas was losing his humanity. Idly, he had to wonder if it truly took so long…if it was a slow and gradual process and whether the other man would be able to stop himself or revert back. He had so many questions, but none were able to escape his throat…not when it so quickly found itself in a vice-grip.  
  
 _“My Catherine?! You stole from MY Catherine?!”_ he snarled. His fangs had distended to kill-length, but the flesh around his face had not yet entirely faded away, offering the other man some slim hope of reaching whatever was left of Finas.  
  
“There must have been a hundred Catherine’s in that cemetery, Finas! How could it possibly be one you knew?!” he wheezed back, hands scrambling in vain to claw the older man’s away. Although he had no need to breathe, being choked certainly made it difficult to speak, especially when he wasn’t allowed an adequate supply of air to pass over his vocal cords.  
  
In spite of the younger man’s reasoning, the stout vampire only replied with a feral roar, slamming Casimiro across the room. The flesh that had clung so desperately to his face had evaporated, leaving nothing but hardened, jagged bone and the face of something the likes of which the younger vampire had never seen before, nor ever wanted to see again. Finas had once told him that one of the many things that made them so much more than stupid animals was their upright stature. Granted, there had been more to it, but he hadn’t been quite listening at the time: had been busy getting a pretty young woman drunk and seducing her. The Briton…or what he had become, however, was no longer upright: was no longer anything that resembled a man. Claws outstretched and down on all fours, he was more like a crouching, slobbering beast with a mouth full of teeth sharper than any knife or dagger. Even his bone structure had changed: each radius had come unattached from its corresponding ulna and had curved out and back, creating two wicked, sword-like appendages.  
  
“F-Finas…” He scrambled back up to his feet, back pressed firmly against the wall as he made an effort to flatten himself out.  
  
The creature before him let out an otherworldly shriek and lunged, swiping long claws across his abdomen. Everything seemed to happen so suddenly, but it was as though Casimiro could feel every second drag by, hear the sound of each stitch popping, and feel each millimeter of flesh rent beneath the other vampire. He threw his arms up in an attempt to hold his mentor at bay, but in spite of it all, Finas kept coming. It was becoming a fruitless venture to try and defend himself; he was no match for the strength and sheer force throwing itself atop him, but even still, the Italian kept his guard up, trying his best to take aim at the lightning-quick beast.  
  
One hand, its nails extended into weak claws of its own, managed to catch the creature’s cheek, but merely brought forth a howl of agitation. This took Casimiro completely off guard and what came next would be one of the most devastating things he would ever recall during the rest of his afterlife. He saw the hand rise…watched the claws and bone gleam in the lamp light…watched them come down, down, down… Those brief few seconds seemed to last for hours until everything went white.  
  
The pain was immense, even worse than what he felt in his abdomen, and he found he could not see past the blood from his fresh wound and that of his tears. He seized, crumpling to the floor and clutching his face, unable to do much more than scream in terror and pain until, finally, his body was too exhausted to do much more than lie there in a heap as he sank into unconsciousness.  
  
He did not know how much time had passed, but when he woke, the first thing Casimiro noted was that his body was no longer lying on the floor: it had been moved and dumped onto the bed. The second thing he noted was that the entire room smelled like blood: _his_ blood. Or at least, the blood he had stolen from so many others as of late. Groaning, he blinked his bleary eyes open…only to find his world sliced in half by a disconcerting lack of sight from his left side.  
  
Frowning, he slowly twisted his head a bit, trying to adjust himself so that he could open his eye (the only reasonable explanation for all this was that it was still closed), but even doing so did little else but cause his head to throb with pain. Reaching up, he gently prodded at his lid. It was intact and very open, and yet he could still not even make out his own fingers save for the periphery of his right eye.  
  
He blinked in frustration, but could only hiss and clutch at the left orb when it burned. Something was wrong: he was supposed to heal back, wasn’t he? Hadn’t his other injuries begun to knit themselves together? What was wrong with this one? Perhaps it was because…  
  
Fear gripped him and his working eye darted around frantically in an attempt to locate the other vampire. He’d almost forgotten about Finas and if the other man were still on the rampage, he could very well be a sitting duck. His sight finally came to rest upon his companion who had, thankfully, regained his humanity and composure long enough to throw his coat and scarf on again (he had come to reason that the frumpy old man used them much in the way a child clings to an old toy for comfort) and seat himself at the far end of the room. Casimiro could just barely make out a faint glimmer in the palm of the other’s hand, but he knew without a doubt it must have been the ring that had started all of this.  
  
“F-Finas?” His voice was smaller than he would have liked to admit.  
  
The man in question did not look up at him, however, and continued to stare down at the piece of jewelry. “It took all my remaining savings to buy this ring…” he murmured. “My debts ran so high…and I knew we were about to fall from grace, but I could not allow her to go without something to show her that I would always love her. She was not meant for servitude. Perhaps the money could have been better spent, but what was I to do? We had not been married long and I was young and foolish and I paid so very dearly for it… And now, you will do the same.”  
  
Casimiro gaped, barely comprehending what he heard but latching on to every word because this time, he _knew_ it was important. But how could he have possibly known Finas had a wife? The man never spoke of her and that had been a few hundred years ago. Had he not let go after so long? The world was comprised of too many ‘what if’s’ already, and he dared not speak out to tell the man that he would not have defiled that grave if he had known; he doubted it would do any good, especially if the man was so attached that his rage would cause a beast like that to emerge.  
  
“W-what do you mean?” He winced again, pressing the heel of his palm harder against the burning socket even as he struggled to right himself.  
  
“Certainly, you must have noticed your blindness by now… I’d been so tempted to rip that eye out; even by the Lord’s law, that would have done little to compensate for the harm you’ve caused. Not only did you defile my wife’s final rest, you’ve stolen from her as well… The one token of my eternal love and devotion…and you snatched it away from her. I had to ensure you would feel the pain I feel for the eternity I shall feel it, and so, somewhere in the murky waters of my consciousness, I deigned to adorn the little Catholic fledge with a cross of his very own. Your eye will never heal, no matter how much blood you consume and no matter how powerful you become. Like myself, you will suffer and you will never forget this so long as you continue your damnable existence fleeing from the eyes of the Lord.”  
  
Casimiro felt his mouth dry out, tongue seeming to swell enough to take up the extra space. He could hardly think of what to say or how to react. The one person he had come to trust over the past century had done the unthinkable: he had knowingly scarred him with a holy mark that would bring him this intense, throbbing pain for the rest of his existence. A part of him felt hollow with the sense of betrayal, no matter how justified the other man might have been in doing such a thing. He drew his legs against his chest and looked away, gaze falling upon the floor, the walls, anything but Finas.  
  
“Do not look so forlorn. You will grow used to it in time. We all must grow used to it should we desire to continue our half-lives. Each of us must bear our respective burdens.”  
  
The words stung and they rubbed the younger man the wrong way just enough so to prompt him to lash out. “If I have so many burdens to bear, then what right have you to add one?!” he snarled. “You talk so little of yourself... How was I supposed to know you had once been wed? We have run through so many names, I could scarcely believe you even remembered your first one! Do you honestly think I would have done something like this with the intent to harm you?”  
  
It was Finas’ turn to pause in silence, his bright eyes finally wrenched away from the ring resting in his palm so that he could swing his hardened gaze towards the slender man. “Truth be told, I trust little of your intentions. You are not yet old enough to know what you desire, nor do you possess any sense of self-control. You all too willingly embrace your new status as an abomination and you take too much pleasure in your ability to study vice first-hand, so do not ask me a question when you already know the answer. I am sure, given your inclinations, that you will not long keep the form with which I now speak. Those incapable of restraining themselves often turn to beasts such as the one you saw over-take me; but where I have the will to compose myself, still others remain so permanently.”  
  
Casimiro bristled at the thought of losing himself so completely, but his ire remained. “If you are so tired of this gift, then why not end it and join your wife? Immerse yourself in the Lord’s water or go weep at her grave where the Sun can reach you! What is this unlife for if not but to enjoy? We have all the time in the world and we will never age! There are women to be wooed and a fortune to accumulate and yet you sit there and preach to me as though it is something to mourn!”  
  
The Englishman’s gaze narrowed and his frown pulled tightly at his lips. Part of him knew that he could not expect a fledgling still so young to understand, but he was growing impatient. Another few hundred years of this nonsense would have him driven mad.  
  
“I am an abomination before the Lord, destined to walk this Earth until the end of time. To take my second life would be yet another abomination. I will never walk the halls of Heaven with my Catherine. You will soon learn what a lonely existence this is. But for our brethren in kind, we are never to know the love and companionship that brief mortality brings. Even should you find another like us, given the time, your lives will become stagnant and you will once again find yourself alone or in the arms of a human whom you will outlive indefinitely. It is cruel, but it is the price we pay and you would do well to remember it to save yourself the trouble of that agonizing realization.”  
  
Love... That was all the older man ever seemed to talk about and it sickened Casimiro to think of it. There had never been a time in his life that he had truly loved someone, and so he had no point of comparison with which to relate to Finas’ ramblings. Surely, anyone could live without love, couldn’t they? It was nothing requisite for life, or unlife as the case might be. He had heard of many people living alone until their dying days, some even old enough to have married twice over! So why was it that Finas placed so much importance on such a fragile concept? How could he still pine for someone after well over three hundred years? He could hardly fathom it.  
  
The silence that followed between the two was so deafening and oppressive that the fledgling was rather grateful for the mere noise the brunette’s movement caused. Done with his chair, Finas had chosen to rise and slip the ring into his breast pocket before heading towards the window. Peering behind the heavy drapes, he pursed his lips and turned to speak once more.  
  
“Tomorrow night, you will return to the soil those things you have not already sold. Afterwards, I shall accompany you as far as France, but that is where we shall end our joint travel. I cannot continue to protect you and experience is, perhaps, the only way you will learn to get along on your own. The Sun will rise within the hour and you will need all the sleep you can acquire.”  
  
The Italian’s face fell, but he said nothing as he slipped back down against the mattress with a soft groan of pain. His abdomen, though it had begun to heal slightly, was still a bloody mess and he was not so sure it would be completely healed by the next night. So caught up in this thought, he did not notice Finas divest himself of his coat and scarf once again, nor did he pay much attention to the older man’s weight coming to rest on the bed. In fact, he hardly deigned to look at the other vampire until he felt something cold and wet dragging itself along his wounds, and looking down in surprise, he found himself being groomed much as a mother cat might clean her litter.  
  
Finas was not particularly careful about how harshly his licking exacerbated the other’s pain and his eyes were perpetually downcast for the duration of the time: focused wholly on each and every gaping slash until they were all forced closed by the accelerated healing power concentrated in his saliva. In his own youth, he had wondered at what a useless power it was to have, not to mention appallingly disgusting, but as a creature that perpetually found itself feeding from the blood of others, it often became advantageous in that his victims need never know they’d been bitten. It also helped in times like these, when his own, or another’s flesh, had been rent and there was no fresh supply of food available.  
  
Once he had made sure to close all of the wounds he’d inflicted over the past few hours, the stout brunette shifted towards his side of the bed and turned his back to the other man, fully intent on dropping all conversation in lieu of sleep.It did not take long for unconsciousness to slip over him like a blanket, and by the time Casimiro’s remaining eye caught sight of light creeping out from beneath the curtains, Finas was sound asleep: completely unaware of his bedmate’s distress.  
  
There were no words between them when they woke the next evening, but both made haste to wash quickly in the basin before heading out into the brisk night. Finas had no need to follow Casimiro; he knew where they were going; had long since burned that place in the forefront of his memories and by the time they had reached the gates, he could smell the familiar soil.  
  
It appeared no one had taken notice of the destruction the younger man had caused, but there was little surprise in that; the area he’d chosen to inflict his damage upon was far to the back and shrouded in shadows and overgrowth. It nearly made the Englishman ill to think of how many graves stood forgotten after so long, how many families had been buried there, how many innocent children lie forever silent. This was why he abhorred visiting cemeteries; he knew he should have been one of their numbers and it was difficult to come to terms with that fact.  
  
He watched as his companion began to revisit each disturbed plot. There were times in which the younger vampire would stoop and, muttering to himself, toss some ill-gotten loot back into a pit before taking a few minutes to at least shovel in a cursory amount of soil to cover the dilapidated wooden boxes and the fetid remains of those who rested within them.  
  
It wasn’t until Casimiro came to the final grave that the older man moved, and with slow, dragging steps, he approached the disturbed plot. It had been some three hundred years since he had laid eyes on that stone, and though the weather and the flora had overtaken most of it, he could still just barely make out the name carved there: Catherine. Heaven knew, he’d been grateful that his father had at least given her the dignity of a proper burial becoming of any Stuart; it had not been her fault that he had squandered their fortune, nor was it her fault that she had been married into their money rather than coming from it herself.  
  
“Leave us, Casimiro…I desire privacy between us.” His words were clipped and it sounded as though there was something clawing at the back of his throat; perhaps that monster within him, the Italian thought.  
  
The fledge turned his back and retreated what he believed to be a safe distance and waited, watching with his single working eye as the older brunette knelt to the ground. He could not hear what was said, but he could easily make out the way Finas’ lips moved: sometimes curling upwards into a sad smile or melting away into a frown that pulled at the remainder of his heart-strings. Only when his elder had risen and finished shoveling earth back into the grave did he dare approach him again, head bowed and hands buried in his pockets.  
  
“France, then?”  
  
Finas pursed his lips and gave his companion a withering glare. Granted, he had fully intended on abandoning the younger man, but he’d seen how difficult it was for him to fly with such impaired vision. He could hardly walk without staggering and reeling; though, his pride had kept him from acknowledging it. It was that same pride that would probably get him killed if he wasn’t given proper guidance. Even as angry as he was, he could not bear the burden of knowingly leaving the boy to die. The poor, damnable creature would be lost without him.  
  
“We shall see…”  
  
Over the next hundred and twenty years, France became Florence, then Hessen, then Turkey, then India, then the New World. Each time, when the younger fledge questioned whether this was truly the last stop along their joint travels, the elder would offer the same answer as he had that first night: the same three words whose meaning would inevitably change. Time was a fickle thing; where it had made Finas kinder, Casimiro had hardened and in spite of his playful attitude, there was something just beneath his vibrant exterior that hinted at something far more toxic.  
  
“Who’d have ever thought these things could go so fucking fast?! I mean, yeah, we got bullet trains now, but still, have you ever really just thought about it?”  
  
Finas snorted and rolled his shoulders upward. No, he had not thought about it, but then, he’d been preoccupied with something far more important than how trains functioned. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat and studied the other with a steady gaze until he was finally able to give his words cohesion. “Casimiro…I’d like you to have something.”  
  
That had certainly gained the Italian’s full attention and he offered the older man a smarmy grin. “For me? Aw, Finny, you shouldn’t have!”  
  
He continued to chortle, even when a pale hand enveloped his own, but when Finas pulled away, the laughter died upon his lips. Lying there in his palm was a golden ring adorned with a few tiny diamonds set along its twisted band. He knew that ring well, had been sure that the elder vampire had long ago returned it to its rightful owner. There were no words between either of them; there needn’t be any, for it was evident that in that gesture lie all the guilt the other man had carried for all those years and what could only be the forgiveness that had arisen from time spent contemplating it. It would never undo all the pain and suffering that Casimiro had been forced to endure, nor would it ever replace his sight, but the gesture was grand enough that it left the younger vampire awkwardly floundering for words.  
  
“So…heh…what uh…I mean…I thought you… Does this mean…What…What exactly is this?” he sputtered, looking entirely unsure of himself for the first time in nearly a century.  
  
Finas watched him squirm for a moment, then rose just enough to lean forward and press his lips against his companion’s. It was brief, just a brush of cool flesh against equally cool flesh, but when they parted, the Englishman was smiling. “It is a token…”  
  
Casimiro couldn’t help but grin back. “Of your eternal love, right?”  
  
The older man offered a playful, haughty snort. “Of my love? Yes. Whether it is eternal or not...we shall see.”


End file.
